Web Design Guidelines

There are many sites that someone could point toward as examples and non-examples - Denise and Jeremy already pointed us toward some. Kevin speaks from current experience of building a site for his church.

One site that I found (actually I believe that some other site pointed me toward this - as is usually the case) is University of Texas at Austin's page on Web Guidelines. Much of this site is geared toward web publishing on UT-Austin servers, however it points toward many issues that seem important for web publishing. I particularly like the Site Architecture and Navigation page that points toward issues for every would-be designer.

Questions worth asking:

• Who is your audience? (might be the foundational question)
  
• What does your audience want to learn from your site?
• Can they get there from here?
• What kind of technology or capabilities does your audience possess (bandwidth, computing power, plug-ins, etc.)?
• Is the site consistent? (across pages, language, organization, page location, link actions)

Another thought that I have is about web Page Personality. Keeping it simple might appeal to certain designers or audience types, but maybe there is a web personality who likes as many links as possible on a page. Although information overload is certainly a term that many have associated with this point in time - maybe human cognitive abilities will evolve with increased abilities to process more information without becoming mired in a virtual quagmire.

Well, happy designing - or happy designing well - or happy well designing (now this is getting too deep)